


Sylvia Malfoy's School for Young Squibs

by deeisace (elspeth_jones)



Series: Wizarding Wales [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1940s, Boarding School, F/F, Gen, LGBTQ Character, Squibs, school for squibs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3436403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elspeth_jones/pseuds/deeisace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sylvia Malfoy is fed up of being treated like her 'condition' is all that she is. She embarks, on her 18th birthday, to make a life away from being shut up in the Manor or married off to that awful Goyle bloke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sylvia Malfoy's School for Young Squibs

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series I've been working on for a while now. It will mostly focus on Harry Potter, but first - some setting of the scene!

_23rd February 1940, 14:48_ **  
Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire.**

  
Sylvia Malfoy fairly stormed from her suite, glaring as she made her way through countless corridors to the ground-floor drawing room. She held what could only be described – to her parents’ disgust – as a muggle duffel bag, inside of which were 6 changes of clothes, her toiletries, a train ticket and a very expensive necklace that some god-awful Malfoy uncle had generously gifted her at Christmas, only 2 months ago. It was her birthday, and she’d finally had enough.

“Mother I’m leaving!” Her mother looked briefly up from her latest embroidery project – a hobby that Sylvie had never gotten the hang of and hated anyway – “Alright, dear. Hurry back. Where are you going, Diagon?”

“Mother, for Merlin’s sake!”

Cassandra looked absentmindedly up again, then seemed to register the situation – her only daughter stood seething in the doorway to the family drawing room, holding a packed bag and wearing a pair of her brother’s trousers. “Sylvie, darling, go and give your brother his clothes back. You know he hates it when you steal his things. And get me some dragon scales when you’re in the Alley – I’m afraid I’ve run out of Welsh Green, but I think I’ve got some Horntail left, so no need for that.”

“Mother, I am not stealing Abraxus’ things! I’ve had these trousers for yonks! And were you not listening? Again?! I’m leaving! And not for Diagon! I’m going to Muggle London!”

“Oh.” Cassie looked slightly alarmed, standing and walking towards her daughter. “Oh. Well. Darling… Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Sylvie kept her determined expression.

“Well, alright, dear. You needn’t fight against me. Shall I set you up a bank account?”

“Really?” Sylvie spoke in a small voice, looking rather dumbstruck. All her determined anger had appeared to deflate from her. She dropped her bag.

“Of course, dear. I love you, though we’ve rather had our fights, haven’t we?” Cassie smiled.

“Er. Erm, yes, mother.” Sylvia hadn’t recovered.

“Though I do wonder what I’m to tell your father.”

“Er… That I stormed off in a huff and you haven’t seen me in 3 days? He’ll believe it, and he doesn’t much give a damn anyway.” Her glare had quickly returned.

“Ah. Yes. I’m afraid he might.” Cassie’s eyes dimmed. “He was never one for feelings… And of course you don’t have many prospects, what with… your condition… So, do you want a bank account?”

“My condition! See, this is – You never acknowledge it! I’m a squib, mother! Yes, and you all treat me like I’m made of bloody china, or a leper! I’m sick of it! And no, I don’t want a bloody bank account!”

“Sylvia Malfoy, don’t use that language!”

“I will if I bloody fucking want to! You can’t stop me! That contract Father drew up with Goyle runs out today, and as far as I can see, there has been no marriage! I’m leaving!”

“Oh.” Cassandra looked as though she rather needed to sit down. “Well, if that’s how you feel.”

“It is.”

“Then of course I won’t stop you. But if you do find yourself wishing you hadn’t left, your father won’t be so forgiving. I have no doubt you’ll be burnt off the Tapestry, like that awful Black cousin of ours last year.”

“Uncle Alphard isn’t awful!” She paused, “Well, he is to you and Father…”

“Yes. Well, goodbye, my daughter. My Sylvie, off in the world. I sort of wish I’d done it myself, but then, of course, I was betrothed to a Crabbe at 18. And then I met your father, and he wanted me, so my father couldn’t resist. I got you and Abraxas, though, so it’s not all bad, hey?”

Sylvie smiled back at her mother, having heard the full story countless times during her childhood when Aquila was late at the Ministry. “Bye mum.” She turned ( _in those awful trousers still_ – Cassie couldn’t help but think), picked her bag back up, and walked out to the driveway. Cassandra followed, and hugged her daughter at the Manor’s gates, just as Abraxas sidled up.

“What’s going on here then, sis?” He spoke with his infuriatingly-handsome-and-charming-aristocrat manners, something that never failed to annoy his sister. “Going somewhere? Finally?”

“Sod off, Ab. It’s fairly obvious. Tell Father I hate him on your way back to the Manor.”

“Well, a pox on you, too, sis! I hope you find London well - it is rather fitting, after all.” Abraxas looked her up and down in a way that would so vex everyone who knew his grandson in his teens, who had inherited his grandfather’s face, though not, it appeared, his restraint. He turned and walked calmly back to the Manor, every inch his father’s son. Cassie watched her children sadly, and then patted her daughter on the back. “Come on, then, darling.”

“Alright mum. I’ll try to floo-call, but you know how well that usually goes.” They smiled.

“I do, dear. Goodbye.” They hugged, and Sylvie pulled away.

Cassandra Malfoy stood at the gates until she no longer saw her eldest child, who marched along the road purposefully, to catch a bus to Warminster and then a train to Epsom.

\---

_The Next Morning,_  
 **Diagon Alley.**

  
Cassandra spoke to the goblin, somewhat cautiously, in his office. “And could you put this amount every month into my daughter Sylvia Malfoy’s bank account in the… muggle world. You can find it if she opens an account, can’t you? And since this is my Greengrass account, you can be chary, correct?” She slid a piece of parchment over the table, and somehow managed to miss the look of surprised (and, it must be said, rather greedy) amazement that passed over his face. “Um… Yes. Yes, that will be… possible, I’ll, I’ll just get the paperwork…” He couldn’t help but goggle again at the number on the parchment – _G200! Two hundred! Clearly this woman has no grasp of the exchange rate these days! That’s a thousand pound Stirling!_

Cassandra waited obliviously for the paperwork to be found and given to her to sign.

“Ah, thank you, Gernuk.”

“Welcome, ma’am. Pleasure working with you. So, just sign here, and here, and, of course, you’ll need to pay commission and fees, so sign here…”

\--

_August 1940,_  
 **Lambeth.**

Six months later, when Sylvie found out she was to receive back-payments of six grand in Stirling from her mother’s account, she nearly reverted to childhood habits of tantrums. Instead, she calmly thanked the branch’s magical liaison and accounts manager for those magicals in the muggle world (she had a muggle account, but as the money was coming from a magical account, she had been called to speak to him), and left the building without a backwards glance. She then proceeded to fairly destroy the little bedsit she’d saved up to rent, throwing her few breakables at the wall and earning the considerable ire of her neighbour, Mr Braidey.

After this, the next day, she when back to her branch, and asked if she could send the money back. The accounts manager told her it wasn’t possible, and that her mother had stipulated that she receive at least a year’s worth of the monthly payments, a rather preposterous amount of £12,000, and that the back-payments apparently somehow didn’t count, since they were without her explicit knowledge. So, this time next year, she’d have more than £18,000. A mind-boggling amount for a runaway squib working in a milliner’s, even if she was a Malfoy. She could, and did, stop the payments after then, but not send anything back.

A week later, she’d come up with a plan. If she couldn’t send the money back, she’d do something with it that her family – her father and his relatives, in particular – would hate. She’d set up a school. One for squibs, like herself, to get qualifications and better themselves in the magical world. And other magical undesirables, she thought. Werewolves, if she found the market, and those few muggleborns who hadn’t the money for Hogwarts or the slightly cheaper schools on the Continent (and that one in Ireland, which most people had seemed to deem fit to close a couple of years ago, but which as still valiantly trying to keep its head above water), or whose parents loathed the idea of sending their children away to be consumed by Wizarding society. She knew, having owled a childhood friend who knew half-bloods, that Hogwarts offered 8 muggleborn full scholarships a year, for students Exceeding Expectations, and a large reduction in price for any other muggleborn who really couldn’t afford the fees, but who had to keep their grades Acceptable. The same wasn’t said for purebloods, because it was generally accepted that they could rival King Midas in wealth. She also knew that most purebloods wouldn’t want to shell out too much to educate their less able squib scions.

Over the next ten years, Sylvia Malfoy owled and contacted all the squibs she knew, and some she didn’t, people who’d been blasted off family tapestries, or who owed her favours. She contacted educated people well-versed in their field, asking if they might wish to become teachers at a school-to-be for squibs, or if they knew any who might. All the necessaries for a working, well-run school. She took courses, under Polyjuice from Knockturn and with fake identification (though registering this after the fact at the Ministry), in business, accounting, teaching, maths, English and psychology. There was much protest in the Wizarding upper class, but many of their squib children saved and sent ‘deposits’ for when the school opened (She had one heartfelt letter from an eight year old girl in 1948, who routinely sent her 45p a month to Sylvie, unknown to her parents, so that she could go to the school when it opened. Her parents were one of the first to request a scholarship, since they were both half-bloods living the Muggle world, and Sylvie accepted it, sending the £34, 2 shillings back to the family with a little note), the news of the school having spread quickly through the gossip channels that even those forbidden to attend the mainstream dances, balls and dinners, as the ‘magical’ did, had access to. Sylvie, in light of this discontent, put in her request to open the school with the International Confederation of Wizards, instead of the British Ministry, and was accepted. The British Ministry couldn’t touch her school any longer.

Finally, in August 1951, it was all ready. She had at least 2 teachers for each subject (so as not to give them an unmanageable workload once the student body grew), several class assistants (for practical classes in Potions and such), a Healer and apprentice, 3 councillors and a general manager/receptionist. By March 1952, she had found the right property (an aristocrat was selling their estate in Wales), and by June the house had been extended and the goblins had finished the wards.

The School for Young Squibs opened in September 1952, with 74 students school-wide. The next year they had 108, and after that, 223.

_In 1957, through the ICW (who did not yet have Albus Dumbledore as their Supreme Mugwump), the SfYS gained the legal right to have all British Squibs refused education, and all British Muggleborns who refused their access to Hogwarts (on grounds of denial or monetary, or any other, concerns etc.) referred to the SfYS, along with the names of all the registered werewolves under the age of 18 and those few brought up in the Wizarding world who were home-schooled. Many magical accidents were caused or contributed to by a lack of magical training or knowledge of the misfired or emotionally-fuelled spell, and this legislation, Sylvie was pleased to say, had decreased the number of magical accidents dramatically, and lessened the Ministry’s Obliviation Squad’s workload sizably by the 1980s._

It was a grand success, and Sylvie couldn’t be happier.  
  
\--- 

Sylvie Malfoy met Alys Prewett first in August 1968, when the younger woman was enrolling her son at the school. They met again, in an unofficial capacity, eight months later, in a queer bar in Muggle Chelsea’s King’s Road. Despite, in the muggle terms, both being ‘butches’, and facing some derision as a result, Sylvie asked Alys to dance, rather nervously, to the Tornados’ _Do You Come Here Often?_. Three years later, Alys and Tony lived with her at the school, with Alys working helping Reggie in Admin and taking a course in counselling, and Tony working up to his O-Levels and OWLs.

\---  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Like I said at the top, it's an on-going series - I've not written most of Harry's bit, and only about half of his parents'. So after Sylvie, I think I ought to say you'll wait a bit.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!  
> Feel free to comment!
> 
> 4/3/15 - Something I forgot to tell you -  
> One of my 'Things which happen to Sylvie' is that she's an ambulance driver during the London Blitz, having joined the ARP. I will credit this idea purely to my reading of Sarah Waters' The Night Watch, which is one of my favourite books (along with her Tippng the Velvet). Sylvie's quite like Kay, really, only more posh and very blonde.
> 
> Also, the muggle Chelsea bar Sylvie and Alys meet at is The Gateways Club, which closed in 1985.


End file.
